Political Quotes

“I have heard that argument, Mr. Speaker. I heard it in 1981. We passed a massive tax cut. The debt increased over the next 7 years 187 percent. That was Ronald Reagan's tax cut. And, frankly, Bob Dole helped raise some revenues to offset that, which is why it was only a 187 percent increase in the debt during the Ronald Reagan years. I heard that argument in 2001 and 2003: We are going to grow the economy. We are going to have extraordinary growth, creation of jobs, and revenues that will come to the Federal Government as a result of cutting taxes. And what happened? Six years later, we had the deepest recession we have had since Herbert Hoover. Nobody in this House is over 90 and, therefore, didn't experience the depth of that recession. The recession that we experienced in December of 2007, when you thought those tax cuts that the gentleman talked about would have grown the economy, just as he talked about, he has got a problem in that CBO says it doesn't grow the economy. In fact, it creates $14 trillion of new debt. That is what CBO says, not Steny Hoyer, not the Democrats. That is $14 trillion--with a T, Mr. Speaker--in new debt that our children and grandchildren will be confronted with. So what do the Republicans do? They had to say, let's balance the budget. Now, balancing the budget means you pay for what you buy. Yes, I am for that. Very frankly, if you buy an aircraft carrier, I think you can amortize that over 40 years. Why?…”